


Awake, Alive

by Beanswithbeards



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, I made some??, Mentions of alcoholism, Meteorstuck, Rose has a nightmare, T for swearing, and starts walking around, desperately trying not to implode bc idk how to tag man, doesn't tell Kanaya where she is, mentions of past death, there isn't enough independent rosemary so like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29249373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beanswithbeards/pseuds/Beanswithbeards
Summary: Your name is Rose Lalonde.You are fifteen years old.You are awake.Rose has a nightmare and can't go back to sleep.
Relationships: Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	Awake, Alive

**Author's Note:**

> yes hello first thing here sorry if it's awful  
> probably going to regret this in a few years but like whatever  
> that's a problem for future me

Your name is Rose Lalonde.  
You are fifteen years old.  
You are awake.

The nightmares had stopped with the help of your mother’s greatest weakness. Instead of the Green Sun in all its violent glory, or the horrorterrors up above, you’d only seen blackness. It was a mercy that came with a cost—headaches, your brother’s avoidance, your matesprit’s awkwardness, and despicable cravings. You would give most things to experience the blackness again.  


Most things, but not these.  


When Vriska had knocked that mug out of your hand, she had done you a favor.  
After your date, you’d gone to Dave, and though you hadn’t really been speaking at the time, he helped you as you’d gone through your stash, helping you to collect bottles to toss off the meteor.  


The alchemiter was right there.  
You could always make more.  
But somehow, the distance had helped.  


You’d slipped up a few times, catching yourself punching in the code for spirits, but you’d never let it get so far that you couldn’t come back.  
And you never drank more than a glass.

Now, you find your hands itching, shaking, longing for a bottle of wine. You’re not entirely sure what you’d dreamt about. Flashes of green, your brother’s voice, Kanaya’s scream—it all blurred together. Blurry, unfocused, it shouldn’t have been terrifying.  


Your heart is beating out of your chest, and you catch yourself getting up.  


It’s going to be one of those nights, isn’t it.

You don’t walk when you’re this tired—floating comes easier, and so that’s what you do. Your mind—your ever-present mind, it never stops, does it, calculating and masterminding and plotting and thinking—runs in loops around ideas you don’t, won’t, can’t think about. But the sleep deprivation makes it easier for your mind to rush past the barriers you’ve put up.  


You think about a lot of things.  


John and Jade, separated from you beyond contact on a ship with plenty of consorts and not much else.  


Dave—Dave!—your twin brother, who’d nearly flown into the sun with you, joining you on a suicide mission because he hadn’t wanted you to die alone.  


You could have died, the sun obliterating you both.  
You hate yourself for being so grateful he’d come with you anyway.  


Your mother, who loved you, whom you hated, who died because of a game that you’d played. Who’d probably known of your folly, and loved you anyway. You think of her, splayed out on the balcony of that deadly castle, bleeding from Jack Noir’s blade.  


You don’t remember much of what came after. Just anger—violent, dripping, you were soaked with it, though it wasn’t wet. You’d become ice, radiating cold and despite your anger—despite it all, you would have died, if John hadn’t come to save you.  


You’d be dead.  
John did die.  


If he hadn’t godtiered—if he hadn’t been reborn—you’d both be just another pair of ghosts, wandering the dream bubbles.  


You’ve already died, really. Hundreds of Roses that lived your life, that made mistakes just like yours, that would have become you, and who you might yet become, populate the dream bubbles. Some of them wear your orange garb. Some of them are still grimdark. Some of them are still in your old squiddles shirt, never having entered the game.  


Death is something you’re familiar with. You’ve seen it. Not often, but often enough. You’ve felt it. Your memories of the doomed session coincide with your memories of the alpha timeline. You remember the hopelessness of it all—John dead, Jade missing, you and Dave, the only ones left, fighting to stay alive.  


You remember, clear as the sun on your god-robes, how it felt to wait to not exist anymore. Everything goes blurry after that. Merges back to your timeline.  


But you were that Rose, once. You haven’t lost yet—not so spectacularly you can’t fix it—but other Roses have. There are Roses out there, in the dreambubbles, who have never met Kanaya. Never known how good it felt to hold her hand. To kiss her. To touch her beautiful horns, and to spend hours holding each other.  


Strangely, it’s that that sends you over the edge.  


Your hands shake.  


The alchemiter is right there.  


You know the code by heart.  
You know the code by _heart_.

Before you know it, there’s a bottle in your hand. The weight, the heft—it’s so familiar—you shake, your stomach curdles.  


You don’t have a bottle opener.  
You don’t know what to do.  
You can’t keep still.  


Your hubtopoband lights up—you remember John had taken it when you’d died, you remember so many things, but you’d made it again, hadn’t you?—and it’s Kanaya, who has been typing for a while, you realize with a pang.

grimAuxiliatrix [GA] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] 

GA: Rose Not That I Do Not Mind Sleeping Without You If You Need Space But It Is Alarming To Me When I Wake Up And You Have Mysteriously Disappeared

GA: I Look Over Expecting To See A Comfortable Rose Lalonde 

GA: But All I See Are Bedsheets And Missing Slippers

GA: I Apologize If This Is Very Mothering And I Am Nagging

GA: But You Must Remember I Had Friends Who Went Missing And Were Subsequently Murdered On This Very Meteor

GA: I Feel As Though You Could Have Woken Me If You Intended On Disappearing In The Night

GA: Rose Where Are You

GA: Rose I Am Worried

GA: Rose I Swear I Will Not Stop Pestering You Until You Reply

GA: Okay So I May Have Been Spending Too Much Time In Proximity To Your Brother

GA: But If This Annoys You Into Responding It Will Have Paid Off

GA: Rose

GA: Rose

GA: Rose

GA: Okay I Am Coming To Look For You Since You Are Not Replying

GA: I Hope You Are Okay

A burst of shame blooms in your stomach. Had you been Dave, you would have compared it to the blossoming of a rose. As it is, you are not Dave, and you simply feel sick. She’s been worrying about you. Of course she has. And you’ve been sitting here, doing what? Holding a bottle in your hand, shaking.  


You’re weak.  


She deserves much, much better than you.  


You are tempted to wait on a reply, but the guilt spurs you on, you can’t make her worry like this. You send her a reply, fingers trembling all the while.

TT: Kanaya, I am so sorry to have worried you. I cannot emphasize that enough. I can’t imagine how terrible that must have felt, especially after the events you described to me concerning your friends.

TT: I am so, so very sorry.

TT: But there is no reason to worry. I am fine—just a bit shellshocked from a nightmare, I’m afraid.

GA: Rose You Scared Me Half To Death

GA: I Am Glad You Are Alright

GA: Where Are You? I Have Searched All The Usual Rose-Places

TT: You needn’t worry about me. You should go back to bed—It’s quite late. I will be alright

GA: Rose With All Due Respect You Are My Matesprit

GA: Using Your Human Terminology I Am Your Girlfriend

GA: It Is Quite Literally My Job To Worry About You

GA: I Will Ask You Again One More Time Because I Am Tired And This Meteor Is The Size Of A City

GA: Where Are You?

A burst of hatred rushes through you. You’re pathetic. You know better than this. You should be better than this. Why the fuck aren’t you better than this? You shouldn’t have to be consoled by your matesprit, your girlfriend, patted and made to feel better when you are hopeless.  


You look at the alcohol in your hands. Anger, like you haven’t felt since your mother’s death, surges through you, and you let it rush through you, out your mouth in cathartic frustration, through your arms and they’re throwing the bottle to the floor, and it smashes into a hundred thousand shiny glass shards that you think for one feverish moment look like stars drenched in blood, and oh, there is one very large shard coming out of your leg.  


And of course, that’s when Kanaya walks in, elegant despite the hour, dressed in a silk robe.  


She sees you, and her mouth drops.  


You’re still shaking, and delirious, and your mind wonders if she knows how her lips are making a perfect ‘o’.  


Kanaya sidesteps the glass, and with that rainbow drinker strength—she’s so strong, she’s so strong and you are so, so, terribly weak—lifts you up and carries you to a nearby couch. Surgically—and you remember that this is the same person who took off her friend’s legs with a chainsaw—she removes the glass from your leg. You wince, but your god-magic stitches up the wound in an instant.  


You’re so pathetic. You’re immortal— _immortal_ , save for two caveats—and you need someone to pick the damn glass out of your leg.  


The meteor is cold this time of night, and you hadn’t realized between your downward spiral and general patheticness, but Kanaya’s warmth only makes the cold colder.  


You realize, somewhat horrified, that there are tears on your cheeks.

GA: Rose You Are Not Okay

No. No, she’s right, you’re really, really not okay. And you do the absurd. You laugh.  
It hiccups out of you, somewhere between a sob and a shriek, and you instantly regret it.  


Your name is Rose Lalonde.  
You are fifteen years old.  
You should be better than this.  


Kanaya looks more worried before, and you wonder how that’s even possible.

GA: Rose You Are Scaring Me

GA: Rose Please Talk To Me You Know You Can Talk To Me

GA: Rose What Is Wrong?

You hiccup once more, and rub at your eyes like you used to when you were a child. Strangely, the gesture helps.

TT: I think

TT:

TT: I think I’m really messed up.

Kanaya looks at you, and her wild eyes soften. She moves closer to you, pausing before she touches you. You nod shakily, and she lifts you into her lap like a child. You rest your head in the space between her shoulder and her neck, and she wraps her arms around you.

GA: Oh Rose

And that’s all it takes for you to burst out into full blown hysterics. The tears before had been silent—these swarm in your eyes and run down your nose and your neck and no matter what you do, they just keep coming, keep flowing out of the glands in your eyes.  


You’re really, really shaking now—Kanaya holds you tighter to keep you from shuddering right off of her lap. You think of all the bad things, the pictures in your mind that won’t go away.  


And you let it all out.  


By the time you’re finished, your face is cold and Kanaya’s robe is soaked through where you’d rested your head.

TT: S-Sorry. I know you loved that robe.

GA: I Can Make Another Robe

GA: I Cannot Make Another Rose

GA: I Am

GA:

GA: The Game Was

GA:

GA: Do You Feel Better

TT: I

TT: I actually do, somehow. Thank you, Kanaya.

GA: Rose Please Do Not Thank Me I Will Always Be Here For You

TT: No, Kanaya, let me thank you.

TT: You didn’t have to do any of that.

TT: You might be my Matesprit—my girlfriend—but you are by no means meant to be my caretaker.

TT: I am so incredibly lucky to have you.

TT: I

TT: I am feeling some very strong feelings right now.

She waits for you, ever patient, and you take a breath. The tears have cleared your mind the least bit. And now that the storm has been washed away, you can see the rainbow.  


John. Jade. Dave. Kanaya.  
Hell, even the other trolls and the Mayor, though you don’t often interact with them.  
You’re all alive.  
You’re _alive_.  


Just to prove it to yourself, just to make sure that you really, really are, you take a deep breath.  
You smell the meteor—musty and stale, slightly chemical— wine, faintly—sour, fruity; it makes your abdomen squirm—and Kanaya—silk and grubsauce, and strangely, flowers. Kanaya. Kanaya, Kanaya, Kanaya. She’s beautiful. You love her, love her so much that you can hardly breathe anymore, so you wind your arms around her neck, and you kiss her, harder than you’ve ever kissed her before, more than the awkward pecks and blushing, more than anything—  


And you’re not making sense anymore, but her mouth is pushing against yours, and her hand is on the back of your neck, and you finally feel—  


You feel like everything is going to be okay.  


Maybe it won’t be.  


But—but, you have to keep going. Everything will be okay. Everything will be okay.  


You eventually break apart, after what feels like an eternity. She’s got green on her cheeks and, belatedly, you realize she’s been crying too, though she’s smiling gently now.  


It doesn’t make you feel as bad as it should—it fills you up with unspeakable warmth, and you realize what you’d thought—the first time you’d thought that—

TT: I love you.

GA: !

GA: I Love You As Well

Happiness—you are so, so delirious overjoyed in this moment, and you lean in to kiss her again, but she turns away.

GA: But You Have To Promise Me Something

GA: Never, Ever, Ever, Leave Without Waking Me

GA: Ever Again

TT: You must be serious—bringing out the punctuation?

GA: Rose

TT: I won’t leave again.

TT: I promise.

Kanaya smiles broadly, showing off her teeth—you adore her teeth, they’re beautiful and pointed and perfect—and you’re left wondering how she does that to you—somehow, though nothing is fixed, though nothing has changed, you feel better.  


This won’t be the last time you have a nightmare.  
But you intend to keep your word.  
This is the last time you’re doing this alone.

Kanaya glances back at the mess on the floor, the one you’d made in your anger, and that beautiful smile fades.

GA: I Did Not Ask You Earlier But

GA: Rose Have You Been Drinking

Guilt surges through you—you really are a switchboard of emotions today—and you shake your head.

TT: I—You have to understand, I didn’t drink any of it—I was so frustrated, and I wanted the nightmares to end—

TT: But I was also so angry at myself, for being so pathetic, for needing to drink in the first place

TT: I smashed the bottle.

GA: Rose You Scare Me Sometimes I Know Human Soporific Has Ill Effects

She sighs, and then looks back up at you, clarity in her eyes.

GA: I Am Proud Of You Though

TT: What? Why on Earth would you be proud of me? I nearly ruined everything again—I should know better!

TT: I should be better!

TT: I am a god!

Kanaya laughs sadly, smiling into her hand.

GA: You Are Not A God Rose

GA: Well Technically You Are By The Rules Of The Game

GA: But You Are Also A Teenager

GA: The Game Was Horrible

GA: Is Horrible

GA: I Watched My Friends Die

GA: You Did Die, Or A Version Of You Did

GA: We Are Fucked Up

GA: And You Had A Problem With Your Soporific But I Am Proud Of You Do You Know Why

GA: You Could Have Easily Imbibed Tonight

GA: The Old Rose Would Have

GA: And I Cannot Even Imagine The Pull You Must Have Felt—But Rose You Are So Strong

GA: You Resisted Today

GA: And For That I Am Proud Of You

GA: You Should Be Proud Of Yourself

TT:

TT:

TT: You’re right

TT: I got carried away. 

TT: We’re all just fucked up kids, aren’t we?

And despite it all, you laugh together, there on the couch, taking in your mutual trauma. It’s not a good laugh, and the weight of your thoughts still settles uncomfortably in your ribcage, but you carry that hope with you—it will get better. You have each other.  


Together, you and Kanaya mop up the wine, sweeping the glass into the garbage where it belongs. It’s cathartic, though it makes you feel sick to be near it.  


When you’re done, she kisses you on the mouth, and holds your hand all the way back to the bedroom you’ve grown used to sharing.  


You climb in, and she’s next to you, elegant as ever, arm snaking around your waist. You bury your head in her chest, and she murmurs something about your headband being “Difficult To Avoid” so she slips it off your head and rests her own on top of it, her rougher hair pressing comfortably against your own. She’s warm, and the blanket is, for lack of a better word, cozy, and you can feel your eyelids become heavy.  


So you hold her, and when you drift to sleep this time, your dreams are filled with her.

Your name is Rose Lalonde.  
You are fifteen years old.  
You will make it out of this alive.


End file.
